Wednesday, December 14, 2016

WHERE DOES YOUR FOUNDATION PROGRAM OFFICER LIVE? IT MAY AFFECT THEIR OPINION OF RADIO

In early December
we featured an interesting question raised by Pierre Bouvard on his blog [link]
about why commercial radio seems to get cut out of ad buys placed by New Your
City ad agencies.

Bouvard’s theory is
that buyers in NYC don’t listen to radio when they commute to and from
work.Instead they use public
transportation (subways, etc.) where they don’t hear radio. Bouvard believes
that ad buyers don’t buy time on radio because they don’t listen it themselves despite
considerable evidence to the contrary.

Bouvard used the
chart on the left to make his point. It shows the proportion of people who use
public transportation versus people commuting in cars. The data comes from the
US Census Bureau. As you can see, the commuting pattern is much different for
NYC than the other nine markets listed and the national average.

Based on this info
I wondered aloud whether people who work at foundations that provide public
media funding might also follow the same trend. After all many foundations are
located in Manhattan. Some are in the same zip code as ad agency media buyers
and likely also ride the subway to get to and from work.

I decided to see
what proportion of foundations that are major financial supporters of NPR are
in NYC. I looked at a list of NPR’s foundation funders and randomly chose ten
foundations whose names are well known to NPR listeners.

Five of the ten are
located in New York, often within short walking distance from the big ad
agencies. The remaining five are in the Bay Area, Miami, Chicago, Indianapolis
and, of course, the Walton clan is in Arkansas. Can we assume that folks at the
NYC foundations, perhaps the Program Officer for your program or project, also commutes to work on the subway, not in a
vehicle with a radio?

Now comes new
research from NuVoodoo Media Services [link], that probes Bouvard’s theory. NuVoodoo
(pronounced: new voodoo) is a good company with a lousy name that specializes
in quick turn-around perceptual research.

NuVoodoo surveyed
423 advertising decision-makers nationwide, included marketing executives,
media buyers and planners, ad executives, creative directors and business
owners to test the validity of Bouvard’s theory. The study found that ad buyers
who don’t listen to AM/FM radio during their commute to work are about half as
likely to include radio in their ad plans.

On the other hand,
media decision makers who commute by car are 75% more likely to have radio in
their media plans than their public transit colleagues.

This is not proof
of causality but it is a close correlation.

NuVoodoo opined
that media buyers must realize that most Americans commute by vehicles and do
hear radio more than any other audio sources.

The findings bring
up questions about how in touch New York media strategists are with the
majority of the Americans.

Is the same true of
Foundation folks based in New York? Maybe Jarl Mohn, CEO at NPR should commission
research to find out.

ERIK LANGNER GIVES US THE
LATEST ABOUT VUHAUS

I just saw an
interesting interview [link] with Eric Langner, the head of Public Media
Company, by my friend John Schoenberger, Triple A reporter for All Access Media
about public media video site VuHaus [link].

Here are some
highlights from John’s post:

SCHOENBERGER: Give us an overview of what VuHaus mission is all about.

Eric Langner

LANGNER:VuHaus is a
collaboration of the country's leading public radio music stations, and through
our growing national music network, we are helping to launch the careers of emerging
artists in markets all over the country, while providing our audiences with a
new music discovery destination to learn about the amazing talent that our
station partners are working so hard to uncover.

SCHOENBERGER: How did you get involved?

LANGNER: VuHaus is managed by my employer, Public Media Company, and
over the past 12 years, I've been fortunate to work with most of the VuHaus
stations in various capacities. So as VuHaus' brand manager, Mike Henry, and I
developed the original VuHaus concept, there was already a long history in
place with the founding stations' GMs, and also with the Corporation for Public
Broadcasting, which has been a generous supporter of VuHaus from the beginning.

John Schoenberger

SCHOENBERGER: You are a year-and-a-half in now, tell us
how VuHaus is doing.

LANGNER: From the very beginning, VuHaus was incredibly fortunate to
attract an amazing and committed team of professionals who bring deep expertise
in the music and digital space. As a result, we have been able to attract and
build out our network by adding a great group of mission-focused stations that
share our commitment to artists and music discovery. We recently launched our
14th partner in Houston, and have another seven stations that are getting ready
to join our collaboration. Each of these stations have PDs, MDs and producers
that are literally experts at spotting and developing talent in their
communities. So with each new station that we add, the VuHaus network benefits
from this very active human curation, which means we are persistently
introducing our audience to new and amazing artists from every corner of the
country.

SCHOENBERGER: What have been some of your biggest
challenges?

LANGNER: As with most start-ups in the media space, we are doing our
best to navigate an environment that seems to be in constant flux, and
dominated by just a handful of massive companies. We feel great about our
non-profit mission to develop the careers of emerging artists and to become a
premier destination for music discovery. And there is no denying the quality of
the incredible and exclusive performances that our stations are producing on a
daily basis. Our challenge is in letting more people know what we are up to and
encouraging them to engage with us and our content.

SCHOENBERGER: VuHaus has gotten two grants from CPB. What
other sources of income keep the service going?

LANGNER: VuHaus' revenues are derived from three sources: philanthropy,
station fees and sponsors. In addition to CPB, we have received generous
support from the Wyncote Foundation and the FJC Foundation. And through
sponsors, we have been able to support our costs to live stream our stage at
SXSW and other live music events around the country.

SCHOENBERGER: Tell us about the new Song Of The Day
initiative and how it is reaching beyond the current participating stations.

LANGNER: We launched Song of the Day with the goal of increasing
exposure for our artists by providing all CPB-supported public broadcasters
with a fully-curated daily feature. We already have more than 35 stations
participating, and each day, our PD, Mark Abuzzahab, selects a different
performance that is then distributed to them through our embeddable player. The
stations are then able to promote these artists on their social channels to
drive new and younger audiences to their websites to see these videos. On
occasion, instead of featuring a song, we offer a live webcast of a concert,
which we are planning to do again next year for our SXSW stage.

SCHOENBERGER: VuHaus has started doing live streaming
events. Has that boosted site views?

LANGNER: We love live streaming! Yes, live streaming does boost traffic,
but more than that, it offers a great opportunity for us to work directly with
the artists and labels to promote and drive attention to these performances. We
are doing four to five live streaming events each week, and this brings an
exciting energy and suddenness to the experience we offer to our audience.

SCHOENBERGER: VuHaus initially launched with radio
stations only but, of late, you have expanded the type of media companies that
are involved. Tell us about the evolution.

LANGNER: This is a really exciting new trend to watch in public media. Public
broadcasters have limited shelf space in their broadcast schedule -- there's
only 24 hours in a day. However, there are a growing number of public
television stations and public radio news stations that are also committed to
supporting local artists and becoming a resource for their local music
ecosystems - this is a critical space that commercial media has abandoned.

So we were really
excited to add station partners like WGBH (Boston), Oregon Public Broadcasting,
West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Vermont Public Radio and Houston Public
Media, which are all known for their news and information and/or PBS
programming, but are also doing amazing work developing emerging artists. It's
our hope that VuHaus, and the experiences of these stations, serves as a
catalyst for an even greater number of public stations to consider deepening
their coverage of the local music scenes in their communities.

SCHOENBERGER: How is the cooperation of the participating
stations/media groups evolving?

LANGNER: Unlike news stations, which have NPR, and public television
stations, which have PBS, the music stations had no national organizing
principal before VuHaus. So although our initial focus was on aggregating and
curating video content, we have quickly grown to fill this void. We are now working
hard with our stations to deepen our collaboration through concerted efforts
around fundraising, marketing, live events, and music rights.

SCHOENBERGER: What lies in the future for VuHaus?

LANGNER:
We have several new initiatives that we are
developing that we are really excited about. Unfortunately, they remain top
secret! But I promise they will include hundreds of new and amazing
performances from some of the most promising bands emerging across the American
musical landscape.